A friend who’s not well needs to find a good home for both of his cats.

In order to ensure that they’re well taken care of, he’s going to give whomever takes the cats $20,000 to cover the cost of any future medical expenses they might have.

The reason I’m writing is that I’ve found someone who wants to adopt them. “Courtney” loves animals, and I know she’d take good care of the cats.

But she recently remarried, and her husband has until now refused to get a cat because he says pets are too expensive. When Courtney told him about the $20,000, though, he said OK.

I’m worried he might not really like animals and could wind up keeping the money but never spending any of it on the cats. Or he could even insist on getting rid of them later. What should I do? Time is running out.

Answer: Redouble your efforts to find a good home for the cats, because you haven’t found one yet.

If Courtney’s husband has as little integrity as you suspect, you wouldn’t want to trust him to water your houseplants, much less care for these kitties.

Question: My children and I recently attended a fundraiser for a friend whose house burned down.

I contributed $100 but accepted only $40 worth of tickets to use on the rides, games and food at the event. So my family ran out of tickets.

As we were leaving the fundraiser, though, my 7-year-old spotted about $20 worth of unused tickets in a trash bin. I let her use them, figuring that I’d in fact paid for, but not used, $60 worth of tickets.

Did I do anything wrong? The tickets my daughter found weren’t ours, and I’m afraid I set a bad example for her.

As you say, you had in effect discarded considerably more than $20 worth of unused tickets yourself.

Plus there’s nothing in what you’ve written that suggests the tickets your daughter found were in the trash by accident and no reason to think you should have returned them to the ticket booth so the person who bought them could reclaim them. So unless the beneficiary of the fundraiser somehow got less money because you used the discarded tickets, you were free to use them with a clear conscience.

Please e-mail your questions about money and relationships to Questions@MoneyManners.net.